Today, an abundant amount of meaningful and feature rich information content is truly at one's fingertips. Currently, using a personal computer (PC) and PC-based browser, one can find information online regarding just about anything they desire. One can communicate with people on the other side of the U.S. or world, set up a teleconference call, tap into the resources of other computers across the earth, search through the world's finest libraries, and visit images from the world's most remarkable museums. One can even use the PC-based browser to watch videos and listen to their favorite music, monitor the financial markets, find the local weather forecast, go shopping, download application software, and so on. Currently, all of this can be done with a personal computer and a PC-based browser that is tapped into a feature rich network of computers such as the Internet, Intranet, or Extranet.
At the same time, the field of communications, and more specifically wireless telecommunications, is currently undergoing a radical expansion. This technological expansion allows an electronic device, such as mobile personal digital assistant (PDA), cellular phone, pager, and other electronic devices to connect to the same information sources, such as a web server or database, as one could with the PC and a PC-based browser.
Unfortunately, this feature rich information content was developed for a standard PC-based browser, not a mobile or portable electronic device that might be limited in memory, screen size, bandwidth, navigation capabilities, power consumption, processing power, etc. For example, an electronic device, such as portable PDA, with a small screen size may be inappropriate to display the same information content originally intended for a PC-based browser, and viewed on a 15-inch or greater size display monitor. Consequently, the PDA cannot be able to faithfully access and display information content as it was originally intended to be viewed. Therefore, it would be desirable to access, organize, and navigate information content including applications.
In another example, a mobile or wireless device with only low bandwidth capability may be unable to view information content intended for only high bandwidth applications. Parameters such as the mobile or wireless device's network connection, memory capacity, power restrictions, or other limitations of the device may require customization of information content that is delivered to or from the device. Therefore, it would be desirable to streamline the information content such that the desired content is received and presented at the mobile device as it was intended to be viewed.
In yet another example, current electronic devices cannot take full advantage of dynamically generated content and interactive Web sites that are typically hosted on today's Web servers. According to this example, scripting languages like JavaScript or Jscript allow a user on a PC-based browser to interact with markup language such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) source code, thus enabling the use of dynamic content. However, it would be desirable for a portable electronic device, although possibly having limited abilities, to also utilize the modem and current scripting languages.
Currently, information content is sent to the device, but often in a format that the appliance, user, or network cannot conveniently accommodate, which produces undesirable results. For example, the data content might be unreadable on the display, displayed in an unorganized fashion, be too voluminous or bandwidth intensive to be received or displayed, and so on.
Creators of content may use tables and/or frames to control the placement of images and text and take better advantage of the available display screen. For further effects, tables and/or frames can also be nested within tables. Tables providing content designed for larger desktop screen displays, however, may not fit on smaller screen displays, such as on a personal digital assistant, cell phone, pager or internet information appliances, or even when windows are resized. For example, content may be wider than the available screen display with portions of the content then be rendered outside the viewable area of the display. The content is then only partially viewable with portions chopped off, which is at a minimum aesthetically displeasing and may also reduce the readability and usability of the content when significant portions are cut off.
To view the content information outside the limited viewable area, a user scroll request such as horizontal scrolling across the content page may be necessary. By horizontally scrolling, the user can selectively show the hidden portions of the content information. Scrolling, however, requires additional input from the user, which is inconvenient, and still does not allow the entire page to be seen at once. Scrolling across the page to see the hidden content usually hides the portion of the page that was original viewable and the entire content is still not viewable. Horizontal scrolling can be eliminated by reducing the width of the information content to always fit within the width of the screen. Indiscriminately reducing the width of information content destroys the integrity of the content as the creator intended and possibly results in the loss of information.
It would be desirable to present content on smaller screen displays to preserve the content, yet selectively minimize the scrolling necessary to view content.